


The Earth Eats Our Bones

by StarEyesAndDiatribes



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: All characters are referenced besides Remus, Maybe some mild body horror if you're sensitive to that, The Earth as a concept, This is more of a freeverse poetry piece not going to lie but, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 21:10:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21204152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarEyesAndDiatribes/pseuds/StarEyesAndDiatribes
Summary: Remus Lupin knows death better than anyone.He knows how achingly long it can take, or the devastation of it's abruptness.He's met death, but their acquaintance doesn't numb the sting.





	The Earth Eats Our Bones

_The Earth eats our bones. _

Remus remembered the way his grandmother said it. Like it was a secret older than time itself. Like a reverent fear known only to few. She may not have had the same magic in her veins as his, but her magic ran deeper, learned through generations and generations of mothers who knew too much of the _Tylwyth Teg._

_The Earth eats our bones._

Sometimes sooner than people wish.

The Earth eats the bones of grandmothers. The ones with too-thin fingers that would rake through his hair and all-knowing eyes. The ones who had laughs that sounded like the wind, and lines that looked like trees, and smiles that nearly glowed.

The Earth eats the bones of mothers. Slowly. Painfully. Taking away the one person who remembered what a child needed, could see past what Remus had been turned into. The one who made sure that kindness and fun weren’t vacant in a self-violent life.

When kind eyes began to hallow, and hands began shaking Remus stopped coming home. He was scared. How was he supposed to be strong when she was gone?

The Earth eats the bones of cruel men. The ones who crept into windows of children. The ones fathers made enemies of. The ones who left their permanent mark, damning a child too young to understand his father’s sins.

She feasts too slowly for Remus to be satisfied, why should a beast like that live while his mother wastes away? Why should cruel men be left when everything else is taken?

The Earth also eats the bones of those children. The ones with fathers made distant by guilt. The ones with mothers who tried a little too hard. The ones who learned that crying did not make the pain go away. That no amount of pleading would stop bones from shattering and resetting every month.

The Earth does not care if you are alive or dead.

The Earth is hungry. So she feasts.

Remus has dealt with that hunger for as long as he can remember. If he tried hard enough, he can almost recall before. Sitting on the lap of his mother’s mother listening to the tales of the _Tylwyth Teg_.

Even those were tainted with the current aches of Her teeth at his neck.

The pain had been less, once. When he was in school with three boys who ceased the pain when they could. The scars were less frequent then, and he thought he knew what it meant to not be consumed.

He thought the boy whose own scars ran deep would breathe the life back into him. Both hands pushing back on Her hungry mouth until the pain faded to softness. To the bliss of relief.

But the Earth eats the bones of friends as well. She takes them too young, leaving behind their youth in an early grave. The soft faces and bell laughs choked off by betrayal of the worst sort.

Remus wasn’t around much by the time they were murdered. He was always gone. Always busy. Always trying to atone for the horror of his disposition. If he did as he was told then he could’ve proved he wasn’t like the rest, he wasn’t a _monster_. He was just a boy who got a bad hand dealt. He was giving everything for those he loved. For James, Lily, Sirius, Peter, _Harry._ That didn’t stop the guilt of his being or the guilt of his absence.

She eats the bones of the ones whose own absence hurts more than Her bite. Remus could barely stand the thought of Sirius most days. Sirius. The boy who became an animagus so Remus wouldn’t have to be alone every month. Who had overcome his upbringing and befriended everyone his family hated. Who had held Remus’s hand the day the Marauders found out he was a werewolf. Who had held Remus the night his mother died, let him break down and made sure he didn’t lose himself to the grief. The Sirius who betrayed everyone who had placed their trust in him.

The Earth eats away your youth.

Remus felt every second of isolation like he felt the aches in his bones. Each moment more unbearable than the last. Remus was alone in his grief. He was too dangerous, too monstrous to be around Harry, to care for the last link of his found family. He couldn’t stand to be around anyone else.

He deteriorated. His body fought back against the transformations far worse than he had as a child, or even in the loneliness of his missions, where the last shred of hope he could hang onto was waiting for his return in a dingy apartment that was hardly slept in.

Remus couldn’t fight it anymore. He knew who he was. He knew _what_ he was. The only man who could love him turned out to be more of a monster than he.

He was lost in himself, Her jaw tightening around his bones every second he managed to stay alive.

It was twelve years before he heard from anyone again. A message. Dropped off by an owl who didn’t bother waiting for a response. Telling him to go back. Go back to the place he met his family, to where he thought he was worth something, that there was something worth fighting for.

He knew Harry was there. The boy who looked so much like his friends, held the same fiery spirit.

He didn’t expect the unrecognition in his eyes to hurt nearly as bad as it did. He didn’t think he had anything left in him to be hurt.

The Earth eats the bones of the unseen ghosts. He knew they weren’t there. Not like Nick, or Peeves, or the Baron. But he felt their presence everywhere he looked. It nearly suffocated him, but he couldn’t decide if that was for the best or not. He doesn’t know what he would think if he could come back and feel nothing.

The Earth eats the bones of traitors, of innocent men, of twelve years of lies revealed in the worst possible moments.

He had been wrong. He had been _so wrong._

But his own affliction failed them.

Because the Earth gets Her fill if you’re ready for Her of not.

“This heart is where you truly live! This heart here!”

The last word Remus Lupin could comprehend. The man he gave up on twelve years ago, with his arms wrapped around Remus’s breaking body like if he held on hard enough he could keep him together.

If only that were the case.

The traitorous rat, the murderer, the _coward_ got away.

Sirius was still pinned as a murderer because he was too much of a monster to control himself.

The Earth Eats the bones of the godfathers, of lovers, of the last of the happiness you had found. Remus felt himself shatter the moment the spell hit. The look of shock, of resignation, of _goodbye_ etched on his face as he fell through those curtains.

Holding onto Harry was the only thing he could do. He couldn’t lose him too.

The Earth eats the bones of young boys with too much on their shoulders.

Harry stopped writing. The pictures in the paper showed him sinking into himself. A world against him as he held onto the last shreds of truth he had. Remus wished he knew what to do.

The Earth eats the bones of manipulative old men. Dumbledore kept too much, asked too much of Harry, turned them all to resort on the man who showed them all mercy in their darkest times.

The Wizarding World shattered as the spider who created this web fell.

The Earth eats the bones of comrades. Of innocents. Of children, and parents, and families. One by one as the newscast listed off names. People he went to school with falling one by one. People he’d known most of his life being killed due to their blood status.

Even the ones he never knew weighed heavy on him. On everyone.

Remus didn’t know how to process the slice of happiness he’d managed to grab. Tonks was so young. Too young. Thirteen years between them. She was little more than a child even at 25.

But shared trauma goes a long way. Too many nights of watching the Order grow smaller and smaller. Too many nights of glass bottles being emptied into too tall glasses. Too many nights of wondering when it all ends.

Remus didn’t feel like this was his to have. How many innocents died before they could get this? How many families had been torn apart while they held this?

Teddy was perfect, every shifting hue of his hair hypnotising to him. Remus never thought he’d be a father. He and Sirius couldn’t have managed it, both too reckless in the face of danger.

Remus saw the same recklessness in Tonks and it _terrified_ him. What would their son do if anything happened to them? Their son would never be alone, he could trust that, but there was a fight to be fought that neither of them could turn away from. When Tonks appeared at Hogwarts he hoped with all his being at least she would return home to him.

But the Earth eats the bones of mothers. Of vibrant girls with bright hair, now dulled in the wake of her death. Her own aunt delivered the curse that killed her. Bellatrix’s manic laughter as she fell the last thing he heard. Remus felt himself shatter, every ounce of hope and happiness destroyed in that moment.

Remus thought it should have been him. Tonks wasn’t even supposed to be there that night. She broke her promise to stay and Remus wished he could be angry with her, but he knew she would come, Tonks could never back away from a fight.

The Earth eats the bones of broken men. Of new fathers who wore a cloak of grief and pain. Who only wished to right the wrongs of the world. Who thought he had finally found his happy ending.

She eats the bones of men who knew Her too well for too long. Who had loved, lost, loved, lost, loved, lost and still found it in himself to love again.

Remus Lupin knew better than anyone else that the Earth will get her feast. Her teeth a constant presence on his flesh, a reminder of Her power and inevitability. He had drawn out his time, found pieces to fill where She had taken chunks out, or let them scab over until she could rip them anew.

He knew. He had always known the one resounding truth.

_The Earth Eats Our Bones._


End file.
